What's in a Name?

The names of familiar cannabis strains are intertwined with particular phases of my life. I think of them fondly, like old friends: Sour Diesel, the East Coast stalwart that kept me buzzed through college, our covert relationship conducted behind dorm room doors. Panama Red, the old-school hippie I fell in love with one sticky summer in New York. Blue Dream, the ethereal It girl that keeps showing up at parties in Los Angeles. There’s a thrill in discovering strains that light up my body’s chemistry; intimacy grows with the ones I seek out again and again.

But the allegation, heard in cannabis-friendly circles and the media, that such names are a big scam haunts me. Perhaps this conversation begins with the scientifically backed discovery that classifying strains as sativa or indica is bunk, given that decades of cross-pollination between the two subspecies has transformed most of today’s strains into hybrids. Researchers at the University of Northern Colorado’s School of Biological Sciences tested the DNA of 30 cannabis strains to find not only that sativa/indica is a false binary but that strains of the same name can display widespread genetic inconsistencies. Even ostensibly identical strains grown by different breeders under variable soil and weather conditions can have divergent chemical profiles. So if two jars of Durban Poison can take on dissimilar tastes and effects when grown by two different brands, does that mean cannabis names reveal absolutely nothing?

“Names are just not relevant anymore,” says Erica Kay, founder and CEO of Cornerstone Wellness dispensary. Back in the day, Kay explains, the cannabis strains believed to be the oldest—Hindu Kush, Afghani, Thai, Aceh and Nepalese—were named after their birthplaces in Central and South Asia. These indigenous strains, known as landraces, were the ancestors to the thousands of hybrids we smoke today—and back then, there were distinct differences between sativas (tall plants with buzzier highs) and indicas (bushy plants with sedative effects). Over generations these landraces were crossbred to bring out desirable traits such as shorter flowering times, higher THC levels and exceptional highs, and the historical differences between sativas and indicas were subsequently blurred.

“Plants have personalities, and cannabis is a diva,” says Eleanor Kuntz, co-founder and CEO of plant genetics company LeafWorks, noting how the drug can trace its migration through an incredible array of cultural groups. “I don’t know of many other plants that have such a dynamic past.” Some cannabis strain names are therefore still useful references to their heritage, including their parent strains or the famous breeders who created them.

Strain names can also reference color, flavor and effect, with the most successful ones birthing new trends. Chemdog, a pioneering 1990s strain popularized at Grateful Dead concerts, was named for its pungent, chemical-like taste; it’s believed to have played predecessor to Sour Diesel, which brought skunky-smelling “sativas” back in vogue. Granddaddy Purple sparked the purple-cannabis craze, further promoted in the 2000s and early 2010s with tracks like A$AP Rocky’s “Purple Swag” and Cam’ron’s album Purple Haze.

And if edgier names like Green Crack and Alaskan Thunderfuck have long basked in notorious glory, the pendulum is now swinging toward more mainstream-friendly dessert names. “This is largely due to the Girl Scout Cookies phenomenon,” explains Pete Pietrangeli, product development manager for Indus Holdings, Inc. Sweet and earthy, known for its orange and purple hues, the Girl Scout Cookie strain preceded the birth of newly popular specimens including Gelato, Sorbet and Wedding Cake. “People love taking a rip and pointing out the similarities in flavor profile,” he says.

Other brands, such as Canndescent, eschew conventional names in favor of effect-based ones like Calm, Cruise and Connect. “Having names like Durban Poison and Trainwreck presents a real problem,” says Canndescent CEO Adrian Sedlin. “What we’ve tried to do is take all this counterculture code and then create some meaning that other people can understand.”

But as strain names proliferate, there are no regulations to stop a grower or dispensary from selling an average strain under a trendier, higher-value name. Kuntz says, “A broker comes to you and asks, ‘What strains do you have?’ And your response is, ‘What are you buying?’” She continues, “If you can get $200 more a pound for a particular strain name, you’ll pass it off as that. There’s a lot of fraud, basically.”

Of course there are basic government controls on cannabis quality and safety, but unethical labeling can be deadly serious for medical patients seeking particular strains to treat their symptoms. It can also lead to wild marketing, like snake oil salesmen selling strains they claim can kill cancer.

David Bienenstock, veteran cannabis journalist and co-host of the podcast Great Moments in Weed History, disagrees. “Strain misidentification definitely happens, but not as much as people think and definitely much less so if you’re buying from a licensed dispensary in a legal state,” he says. “Often this is an honest mistake, as it’s sometimes difficult to verify a strain since so much cannabis breeding took place underground.”

Therein lies one of cannabis culture’s greatest conundrums: The secrecy and myth that make cannabis history so sexy are exactly what’s confounding its current transition to the mainstream market. Without science-backed databases, regulatory watchdogs and well-researched histories, the celebrity-strain industrial complex rests on a murky swamp of unscrupulous marketing and even outright consumer fraud.

Existing databases such as Leafly, Wikileaf and CannaConnection list thousands of strain etymologies, but these resources largely lack scientific merit and regulatory authority. “We do not have the means and methods to verify the consistency of strains, and we heavily depend on the information given by breeders,” says CannaConnection’s Renzo Alexander. “Many so-called breeders are just commercial companies that buy a certain strain from a wholesale company and give it a new name.”

Trust issues continue to dog the industry: A much-hyped attempt to build an accurate strain database led by Phylos Bioscience recently imploded when the company revealed plans to begin its own breeding program. Growers who had submitted genomic data to Phylos were outraged, fearful that their information would be used to develop strains without their consent.

Experts are racing to figure out solutions—especially with the emerging field of cannabis-strain patents. LeafWorks, a newly launched botanical-identification company run by Kuntz and a scientist-led team, developed a DNA test to cross-reference buds against registered strains in their database. LeafWorks partners with a nonprofit herbarium called Canndor to preserve physical specimens in hopes of creating strain definitions verifiable through DNA and documentation. While DNA is not currently required to patent a strain, the company claims this kind of supplemental data lays the groundwork for legal protection.

Beyond the outdated distinction between sativa and indica, the word strain itself may be irrelevant. “Strains are meant to describe microorganisms, like bacteria, fungi and viruses,” says Kay. “Chemovars, chemotypes and cultivars are better-accepted terms to describe cannabis.”

Dr. Ethan Russo, a cannabis research pioneer and medical director of biotechnology company Phytecs, puts it more bluntly: “It has been clear to scientists for a long time that strain names are extremely unreliable.”

For now, it seems the best way to beat the strain-name scam is to purchase your cannabis from the same grower at a licensed dispensary—or better yet, grow your own. Until the industry is able to come up with better ways to verify strains, document their histories and form regulatory bodies, a strain by any other name could just be savvy marketing—and would smell as sweet.